A brief musical interlude
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- Date published:
7:04 am, May 14th, 2008 - 7 comments
Categories: history -
Tags: awesome, fish, music, vietnam
If only I’d been around in 1969, and hanging out in upstate New York.
Hard to believe that the best we can do today is Westlife.
Well, that’s not fair. I like these lyrics from ‘Think Twice’ the song put together by a group of New Zealand musicans following recent violence in South Auckland:
Creeping around, reaping hell
Like the only consequence is that clink of the cell
But feeding the mouths of those speaking aloud
Of tightening your freedoms and your rights on the Right-wingThey’ve singled them out and they can’t think for themselves
They play into the hands of the extreme
Living clichés; bringing calls for a Police State
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“They play into the hands of the extreme
Living clichés; bringing calls for a Police State”
Isn’t “police state” a bit of a cliche in itself? I’m not sure what the rest of the lyrics say, do they talk about the problems of youth gangs?
Thakur Ranjit Singh:
“New Zealand government periodically warns its residents about safety in Fiji. Have they ever assessed what it is like in South Auckland?
The rising youth crime especially from Maori and Pacific Islander communities needs to be tackled and despite all the call about being PC (politically correct), we should not suffer from the Ostrich Syndrome and deny this fact. The question that needs to be raised is what have the community been doing about this?
In this respect I comment the leadership of Hindu Council of New Zealand who took pro active action despite their community registering less than 1 per cent reported crime in Manukau.
Indo Fijian Judge Ajit Singh from Manukau District court addressed a workshop organised at Hindu Heritage Centre in Mangere, Auckland in October last year. Through his experience in working with offenders, he stressed that criminal offences could be contained if perpetrators received timely and appropriate counselling rendered by responsible institutions and community groups.
My issue, with escalating youth crime is, who else is doing anything about this? How are Maori and Pacific Islander communities addressing increasing lawlessness in their young people, especially in South Auckland?”
http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=80692
The song is a critique of the street gangs.
The lyrics I quote are saying ‘look if you go around causing trouble, it’s going to come back to bite you in more than the immediate consequeces of arrest. Your actions fuel a backlash from the Right-wing who will say you need to have your freedoms and rights restricted, and that the power of the State over people’s lives needs to be increased to preserve law and order’
Except, they rap it.
The lines are by Cyphanetik (Jared Abbott), the founder of Breakin Wreckwordz, far and away the best hip hop label in the country. Support their stuff, buy their records. Possibly socialists, but no-one’s perfect.
Check out http://www.breakinwreckwordz.co.nz
sorry but I can t agree with any of this at all..hip hop started out as a vanity press for crack dealers in the New York projects and nothing has changed.
except that most people who do hip-hop aren’t crack dealers?
Someone should send that link to Redbaiter…
The AllStars track is fantastic. The origins of hip-hop, I think, aren’t all that important. Isn’t the point that icons of the genre are directly addressing their supporters whose petty crime lands them in trouble with the law. Anyone who’s ever been in a District Court will recognise that there is a preponderance of young men facing charges of possession, assault, theft etc and once they’re in the system, sadly they all too often don’t get out. I think these guys deserve a medal!